Embers of an Autumn Fire
by CaffieneKitty
Summary: "Take your brother outside as fast as you can! Now, Dean! go!" That happened. John coming out of the house didn't. Eight years later, everything changes again.  GEN AU
1. Chapter 1

**Rating/Warnings:** Gen, Teen. AU. Very imperiled minors. References to bad family situations and therapy. Gore.

**Disclaimer:** These characters and their assocoated world are not mine, no matter how much I bend them.

**Author's Notes:** SPN Summergen story, re-posting now that the authors have been revealed! Written for **kellifer_fic**'s Prompt: "AU - Sam and Dean are raised normal, but the hunt finds them" Beta'd by **bellatemple**, **ciaranbochna** and **sandrinnad**, any remaining mistakes are mine.

**Summary:** "Take your brother outside as fast as you can! Now, Dean! go!" That happened. John coming out of the house didn't. Eight years later, everything changes again.

-.-

**Embers of an Autumn Fire**

by CaffieneKitty

-.-

**_~ Prologue ~_**

_"Take your brother outside as fast as you can! Now, Dean! Go!"_

_Dean ran as fast as he could carrying Sam, down the stairs and out onto the grass, then stopped and looked back. Fire was burning in all the windows upstairs, even Sammy's window, where Mom and Sammy always waved down at him when he was outside helping Dad in the yard._

_Something not-quite-fire moved in Sammy's window. Dean stared. There was..._

_Dean stumbled backwards and sat down hard on the grass. Sammy started crying louder. The window exploded and flames roared out like an angry lion._

_"It's okay Sam," Dean said, clutching his brother and staring wide-eyed up at the flaming nursery window. "Mom and Dad are coming. Mom and Dad are coming."_

_When the fire trucks came Dean was still sitting on the grass rocking back and forth, eyes aching from staring up into the firelight, whispering those same five words over and over to his sleeping baby brother, even though they didn't mean anything anymore._

**__**

~ i ~

The Chevelle rolled into Clarksburg, Iowa, greeted by the welcome sign which declared the town to be: 'Home of the Clarksburg Wilderness Avian Preserve - Nesting grounds of the Lesser Flycatcher and Black-Billed Cuckoo'

"Barely even on the map," muttered Bobby.

Clarksburg wasn't too inconvenient a place to stop. Bobby was on the way to Oregon where another damn bar was having problems with another damn ghost, and the local hunters were all wet-behind the ears punks who'd rather wave crystals at an angry spirit than dig up the corpse and put the poor bastard out of his misery. That particular ghost wasn't due for another flare-up until the middle of next week, so there was plenty of time to check out a potential side-case in the bustling metropolis of greater Clarksburg.

Not much evidence to support a case, though. An elderly man was missing, and a higher than average number of pets had disappeared in the weeks before. Could be nothing, could be a case about to get much bigger. Travis thought it was likely a Rugaru, but some days it seemed like Travis thought everything was a Rugaru. Every hunter had their obsessions, and Bobby wasn't going to let Travis's or his own blind him to whatever the facts might present.

Before he'd left South Dakota, Bobby had phoned the retirement home, claiming to be a concerned nephew of his missing 'Uncle' Thaddeus Fischer. The old man had been mentally sharp, independent and ornery, but not inclined to wander off. He had heart problems, and a pacemaker to go with them. Six months before disappearing he had hip replacement surgery and his heart condition had taken a bad turn as a result of stress from the surgery, but he'd mostly recovered by the time of his disappearance. On the recommendation of the staff physician, he'd been taking regular walks on the retirement home grounds. He'd liked to walk along the fence and watch the birds in the forest preserve.

The home wasn't holding out much hope of Thaddeus still being alive a week later. He'd been on several kinds of medications, not just for his heart. The assumption was that he had snuck off the grounds and fallen or had a heart attack and died. Police had done a thorough search - even in the forested bird sanctuary - and found no trace, but they were still on the lookout for him and were still asking the public to report any sight of the old man.

Any number of unnatural ends were possible for Thaddeus Fischer, but so were many natural ones. In combination with the notable increase in missing pets and farm animals in the surrounding area it could be something escalating its prey group from animal to human. Or it could be coincidence.

Looking into anything where there was the remotest possibility of more people dying was never a waste of time, even when it did turn out to be a coincidence.

Bobby aimed the Chevelle towards the only motel in town.

-.-

Dean threw a newspaper at 1298 Parkview Lane. The paper spun in a high arc to tumble down into the shaggy rosebushes beside the front stairs.

"Bullseye," Dean snickered as he rode along.

"C'mon, Dean, wait up!"

He back-pedaled into a lower gear and coasted. "You don't have to follow me on my whole route you know. You could just wait at home 'til I come back past our house and we can ride to school together from there."

"I want to," said Sam as he caught up to ride alongside. "I like riding bikes with you. It's fun."

Dean threw another paper. "I'm not riding bikes for _fun_, Sammy, I'm _working_."

"...You don't want me to follow you?"

Dean pulled another paper from his bag and tapped it once on his handlebars. "Naw, it's okay I guess." The paper sailed over a laurel hedge, setting a dog barking.

"Cool." Dean could hear Sammy's grin in his voice.

The morning sun filtered through the trees of the old woods as they turned in tandem down Anglewood Crescent. The short dead-end street stuck into the edge of the forest preserve, surrounded on all sides by looming trees. Sam pulled away to the other side of the street when Dean passed the run-down house on the block, then back beside him again.

It was just a stupid old house, 2872 Anglewood, but Sam would never ride close to it. Dean eyed the place: peeling paint, overgrown lawn, windows like black eyes, peering at the world. It was a creepy house, but it was just a house.

Sam had what adults liked to call 'too much imagination'. He'd hear something in the night or see something out of the corner of his eye. Aliens, monsters, ghosts. Just shadows.

There was once a time when Dean had had 'too much imagination' too. Not anymore.

Dean didn't say anything as Sammy joined back up with him and they left the little dead-end street together. Sam cast a frown back over his shoulder.

"You got your pajamas for your karate club tonight?" Dean asked to distract his brother from the creepy house.

The Sammy-frown turned towards him. "It's a _dobok_ and it's _Tae Kwon Do_ lessons, Dean."

Dean smirked, facing away from Sam so he couldn't see. "Karate's cooler."

"Nuh uh."

"Ever heard of the 'Tae Kwon Do Kid'? I sure haven't."

"Tae Kwon Do's better. It's like ninja training."

"You know no amount of any kind of training's going to turn you into a mutant turtle, right Sammy?"

Sam stuck out his tongue and stood up on his pedals. "Race you to the corner!" The two of them swooped along the long road circling the bird sanctuary.

-.-

The visit to the Clarksburg Woodland Retirement Home as 'FBI Agent Mike Kayser' hadn't turned up anything Bobby hadn't gotten on the phone as 'Thaddeus Fischer's nephew'. A few of the staff had gone on stress leave; the atmosphere among the remaining staff was a kind of nauseous, staunch dedication to duty.

The retirement home was at the end of a dead-end street. Only one road in or out of it and that went past the community center, the west side of an elementary school and along the edge of the 'famed' Clarksburg bird sanctuary which separated them all from the suburban sprawl. The majority of pets had gone missing from houses up and down the tree-named streets in that same suburb on the other side of the forest. Chances were, whatever it was, it was somewhere in or near those woods.

Regardless of what might be hunting in this town, if the old man was taken, it was already too late to save him. _Poor bastard._

There was, of course, a very faint chance that the old man was the one responsible for the animal disappearances, but Bobby had yet to run across a creature that could convincingly fake having hip surgery. Unless the man had been taken over by a shapeshifter... but then he wouldn't be missing as far as the people who knew him could tell, he'd just be a shapeshifter, and in actuality hidden away somewhere. So, not a shapeshifter, one way or the other. Maybe.

_That's the problem with hunting. If it isn't one thing it's half a dozen others._

If it was a Wendigo, it was way the hell and gone out of its stomping grounds in Minnesota, so it probably wasn't. If it was a Rugaru, and the old man was its first human kill, then the monster's struggles to retain any shred of humanity had failed and the death toll would be going up, sharp and quick. So far it fit the pattern for a Rugaru; Travis did know a thing or two about them. Start with the hunger, then animals, then vulnerable people. But that could be the case of anything hunting, Rugaru or not. Could be there were some street people and transients missing too and no one had noticed but this town was so small, it wasn't real likely. Mr. Fischer might have been its last substantial meal. Whatever this was, if it was hunting, it'd be getting hungry. Kids would be next.

He and Karen had never had kids. They'd intended to, but with what had happened, it was probably best that they hadn't gotten the chance. Still, any case where kids where being targeted got at Bobby. Maybe it was the missed opportunity for a 'normal' life, maybe it was just human nature. Kids were off-limits to monsters, or should be. Far too often that wasn't the case.

Since the home and the school were so close, and since Mr. Fischer had vanished during school hours, there was a good chance one of the kids might have seen something.

-.-

Dean drew a 'Y' shape onto a sheet of graph paper as the teacher droned through the class list.

Science was awesome. They'd taken apart a toaster to see how it worked, they'd made baking soda rockets, they'd hooked fifteen batteries into one long row and blown up the little test light bulb. If they were really lucky and asked the question right, the teacher would show them exactly how all the stuff on MacGyver really worked.

Science, awesome. Having to do a second roll-call for science class was boring.

_The arms are too weak. If they were stronger, I could use a stronger kind of elastic, pull harder-_

"Dean Kirkland?"

"Present," said Dean, not stopping his diagramming.

"Nicholas Kowalski? Nicholas Kowalski? Dean, did Nicky come to school with you today?"

"He's in court today."

"I thought that was next month."

"They bumped the date up. You should have got the notice last week but there was a sub."

"Ah. Thank you, Dean."

Ignoring the glances of the newer kids in class, Dean hunched closer to his desk. _Nicky's just a foster kid, like me and Sam used to be, not a criminal._

He scribbled out his plans and started over.

-.-

Talking to any kid alone was running a risk of misinterpretation these days. Situations like this though, kids usually saw more than the adults and were more willing to talk about 'maybes' and monsters and things that didn't make sense, and as a result were also more likely to be dismissed by the actual authorities. Talking to a group of kids with the school's permission was the best chance he might get to find something out.

"He looks like Santa Claus," a small voice whispered as Bobby waited with one teaching assistant for the other to return. He'd been informed he was interrupting the Kindergartner's 'Count the Flowers' day. He glanced to the side and saw a cluster of very small kids lurking in the shrubbery beside the entrance.

_Santa, hunh,_ Bobby mused. _Would've thought I had a decade or two before I started getting compared to Santa Claus. I'm only 39._

"You think everyone with a beard looks like Santa Claus," said a second little voice.

"So?"

"His beard's not big and white, and he's not fat." The second voice paused a moment. "He looks mean. He looks like he wrestles alligators for fun."

Bobby raised an eyebrow and resisted the impulse to scratch his chin. _Maybe the beard's a mistake._

"He still looks like Santa."

The school door opened and a middle-aged woman with black hair twisted up into a complicated braid came out, followed by the teaching assistant, her eyes as wide as the kids who thought he looked like Santa.

"Hello, I'm Vice Principal Rashad," the woman said. "Could I see some identification please?"

Bobby smiled and handed over his best fake FBI ID, momentarily regretting not updating the photo to include the beard.

"Well. Well," she said. "I think perhaps we had best continue our conversation in my office." She smiled tensely and held the school door open as the wide-eyed teacher's aide who'd fetched the Vice Principal rejoined the one that had been watching him.

As Bobby passed the shrubbery, he smiled and nodded at the kids hiding there. They disappeared, squeaking like mice.

-.-

"There are always pets going missing, Agent Kayser. It's spring."

Bobby tucked his chin down and soberly regarded the Vice Principal across her desk. "Often a criminal predator will start on animals, pets and the like, then move up to people not so able to defend themselves. An elderly person walking alone..."

Mrs. Rashad's mouth tightened. "We heard someone was missing from the retirement home. The fifth and sixth graders sing carols there every year at Christmas, the Home's right down the block. You don't think he's just a poor old soul wandering off, then?"

"It may well be, but we have to investigate to be sure."

A bell clanged and conversation was momentarily drowned out by the sound of hundreds of small sneaker-clad buffalos stampeding through the halls.

"Recess," said the Vice Principal.

"Ah." Bobby looked out the window at the kids flooding the yard, then past the school grounds to the woods across the road. "Kids play much in that forest there?"

The Vice Principal smiled. "No, no. It's _haunted_ you see."

Bobby raised his eyebrows. _That was easy._ "Really?"

"Oh, you know children. There are always stories about ghosts and monsters in the woods. They're likely the same stories I heard when I was in school."

"And were they true then?"

She laughed, folding her arms across her chest. "There are no such things as ghosts, Agent Kayser."

He smiled. "Of course not."

"The forest is a bird sanctuary. There are trails through, but the public isn't encouraged to visit it. Disturbs the habitat." Mrs. Rashad shook her head. "Sorry. I'm rambling."

"No, that's alright."

"Is there truly someone dangerous out there, Agent Kayser?" she asked, her mouth set grimly. "Should we warn parents?"

"Well, I wouldn't want you to spread undue panic. Until we find out for sure what's going on here, you'd best stress caution. It would be a good idea if you had the teachers go over the usual 'street safety' lessons with the kids again. No walking home alone, get home before dark, stay out of any areas someone might be lurking, don't talk to strangers and so on."

"Was there anything else I could do to help your investigation any other questions?"

"I was wondering, I realize it's against policy, but would it be alright if I talked to some of the kids?"

"The children? Why?"

"Well, kids get into a lot of places adults don't, and they notice things an adult would dismiss. The home being just down the block, there's a good chance Mr. Fischer or anyone who intended him harm went past your west side fence."

"That's the Kindergarten to Grade Three play area." Mrs. Rashad's eyebrows drew down in concern. "They're very young, Agent Kayser."

"If any of them saw anything, anything at all, it could be a great help in finding out what's happened to Mr. Fischer and making sure it doesn't happen to anyone else."

The Vice-Principal looked out into the schoolyard at the clusters of children. "I don't think..."

"I promise, I won't say anything that might scare them. You and some of the other teachers would be observing, no more than a few minutes."

Mrs. Rashad turned back to assess the man seated in front of her desk.

Bobby met the Vice Principal's eyes earnestly. "Please Ma'am. It could really help the case."

"You're right, Agent Kayser, it is strictly against policy, but... it's to help your case, and ultimately to make sure everyone in the community is safe. I doubt you'll get much out of them but tall tales, though."

Bobby smiled. "That's all right. Better to ask than leave an avenue unchecked."

"I would need to check your credentials, of course."

"Of course," Bobby said, handing over a business card and smiling as the Vice-Principal picked up the phone and dialed the back-office line at Harvelle's Roadhouse.

-.-

"Wanna go out shooting cans later, Justin?" Dean asked, hanging off the steel railing of the school's outdoor basement stairs. "I figured out how to make the slingshot hold together better. Even MacGyver would totally think it was awesome."

Dean glanced across the schoolyard to the younger kids' play area but couldn't see Sam. Vice Principal Rashad was out in the playground today with the teachers. Weird.

"Nah." Justin bounced a super-ball around in the cement stairwell. "I'm never gonna be any good at it."

"You just need more practice, it's easy! I can make you one too if you want?" Dean had one half-built but Sam was too little for it yet. Justin could have that one, and he'd make an even better one for Sammy. He had some more ideas on how to improve it.

Justin snorted. "If my mom ever found a slingshot in my room, I'd be grounded forever. Your parents are different. They're cool."

Dean shrugged. "They're okay. They don't exactly know about it either." That was another reason he wasn't going to give one to Sammy yet. Sam was sneaky, but he sucked at hiding things from the Kirklands. _Mom and Dad_, Dean amended mentally. Even four years after the adoption went through, it still felt wrong.

He looked back over to Sam's side of the playground and spotted Sam with his friends. Mrs. Rashad and one of the playground monitors stood nearby, but a man in a suit who looked like a lawyer crouched in front of them.

"I was thinking maybe I could come over and you and me could spend some quality time with Sonic the Hedgehog?" Justin asked.

Dean frowned and dropped from the railing. "Sure. 'Scuze me a sec."

-.-

"I bet aliens took 'em," the littlest kid said with earnest glee shining in his dark eyes.

One of the two identical girls in matching sun-dresses tossed her long brown hair. "There's no such thing as aliens."

"Hey!" That was the not-quite-so-littlest kid, defending his friend.

Littlest again. "There's a billion stars in the galaxy and planets everywhere and there's no way there isn't aliens."

"Ha!" Same identical girl, with the attitude of a queen. The second girl stood behind her like a shadow. "Real life isn't like Star Trek, Cody. Klingers don't exist."

"It's Klingons, not Klingers! Klingons are cool! Lieutenant Worf is awesome!" The little boy shouted defiantly.

Bobby's smile felt a trifle lop-sided. "What makes you say it might be aliens... Cody was it?"

The littlest boy nodded. "Cody Harris. That's my friend Sam," not-quite-so-littlest raised a hand in a shy wave, "and that's Lizzie and Gail. They're okay. We all do Tae Kwon Do!"

"Really!"

"Agent KAY-ser," the queenly twin sing-songed, "you don't think there's _really_ aliens, do you?" asked Lizzie, with a smirk at Cody.

"Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. I don't know. Did you see something that made you think there might be aliens somewhere, Cody?" What was an alien to an eight-year-old could actually be a spirit or monster of some kind.

Cody scuffed a foot in the dirt. "Naw, I was just hoping."

Bobby was keenly aware of the bemused observation of the Vice-Principal and one of the schoolyard monitors. "What I want to know is if any of you saw or heard anything last Tuesday, anything at all, even if it's weird. Maybe something in those woods there-"

"There's a monster in the woods!" Cody chirped.

Without even turning around, Bobby could tell the Vice Principal was covering a smirk. "Really?"

"Yep, everyone says. It's supposed to be a safe place for the birds so nobody's allowed in, but really, there's a monster or a ghost or something in there that comes out at night and-"

"There is not!" shouted the quieter of the two girls.

"Is too! Everyone says!"

"It's just a story, like Bloody Mary and the Hookman!"

As the three of them got into a bickering session, Bobby noticed that the fourth member of the group, Sam, hadn't said a word since speaking up in defense of his friend. The boy stood off to the side, hands stuffed into his pockets, shoulders hunched as he ground a rock into the dirt with the toe of his sneaker.

If Bobby was any judge of such things, that was a kid who'd seen something.

"You're awfully quiet there, son. You got anything to say?"

The boy glanced up, then down again. "Naw. It's nothin'."

"Anything you might have seen or heard could be helpful."

Sam looked over at his group of friends who'd stopped bickering and were watching him now. He frowned, then looked at Bobby's shoes and said in a husky voice, "There's a house, on a street right next to the woods. I- I don't know what it is, but the house is wrong."

"Wrong how?"

"Just _wrong_. The whole woods, they're creepy and stuff, but..." The boy half-shrugged, glancing around at his friends again, his voice dropping further to a bare whisper. "That house is wrong."

"You're scared of a _house?_" The queenly twin glanced at her quieter shadow and giggled, the shadow twin joining in after glancing between her sister and Sam. Cody tipped his chin up and squared his shoulders, glaring at Lizzie.

Bobby could tell that something more than a ghost story was going on. Whatever this boy could see or hear from this 'wrong' house was real to him, and worth investigating.

"Okay, son. D'you think you could tell me where the house is?"

"It's on my brother's paper route, but I don't remember the name of the street. It sort of sticks into the woods and doesn't go anywhere."

"It would really help my investigation if you could tell me where it was. Is your brother around?"

"Sammy? Everything okay?" An older boy was coming across the playground.

The boy's face lit up and he turned away from Bobby. "That's him! Dean! He's from the real FBI, Dean! Agent Kayser, this is my brother!"

The older boy put an arm around the younger's shoulder. "Really? FBI! Wow!" The look on the boy's face was considerably less impressed than his words.

"Your brother here says there's a weird house on your paper route. Could you tell me where it is?"

"Nope." The kid's green eyes and expression were closed off. "No idea."

Sam frowned up at his brother. "But Dean-"

The older boy set his jaw and squeezed Sam's shoulder.

"Could you maybe tell me which streets your paper route goes down?"

"Sorry, sir." The older boy smirked. "Confidentiality of the press."

Bobby raised an eyebrow with a faint smirk of his own. _Smart-mouthed little cuss._

"Agent Kayser," the Vice Principal said behind him, "it's nearly time for the children to go back to classes."

"Yeah." Bobby stood. "Thank you very much for your help, kids."

Bobby left the little group behind and followed the Vice Principal to the schoolyard gates.

"I'm sorry if you didn't get the information you'd hoped for, Agent Kayser."

"That's alright, and the FBI appreciates your cooperation, Ma'am. If you don't mind, I'll leave you my pager number. If any of the kids comes up with something, even if it's monsters or ghost stories, you give me a holler."

The Vice Principal nodded, took the number down on the back of Bobby's business card and went back into the school.

Across the schoolyard the two boys were still standing close together. Bobby knew trying to get more info on those specific kids from the Vice Principal would cause more trouble than solve it. She might find it reason enough to further question his completely fake credentials and his 'supervisor' who operated out of a roadside bar. He'd have to find that house on his own. It might be nothing, but something about it really had that little boy scared, and his brother willing to defend him against all comers.

_Whether the kid saw or heard something or has some kind of sense of things, there's more than just an active imagination behind that fear. It might be as good of a lead as I'm gonna get._

-.-

Dean kept his hand on Sam's shoulder as he watched the FBI man leave with Vice-Principal Rashad. Sam's friends clustered together, whispering and glancing in Sam and Dean's direction.

"He was from the FBI, Dean, that's bigger than the police. You should've said what street the house was on."

Dean sighed and rubbed his eyes. "You shouldn't have told him about it, Sammy. Grown-ups never believe."

"But that house-"

"I know, that house bugs you, but it doesn't matter. Grown-ups never ever believe about things being weird, or monsters."

"Do you? You believe me, right Dean?" Sam turned, looking up into Dean's eyes and ignoring the giggles of the twins.

"I know how it is, Sammy. You think you see something. Maybe it's a monster, maybe it's just imagination. All grown-ups ever believe in is imagination."

"You didn't say whether _you_ believed me."

Dean watched the FBI Agent get into a blue car in the parking lot and drive off, not answering Sam's question. "After your class tonight, you want me to ride home with you?"

Sam wiggled his shoulder out of Dean's grip. "No, I'm going with Cody, Lizzie and Gail, same as always."

"If that FBI guy is investigating something bad, maybe we should-"

"I want to go home with my friends," Sam snapped.

Dean looked over to where Lizzie was laughing loudly and making monster claws with her hands in Sam's direction. Gail was covering her mouth like she wasn't sure whether to giggle or not and glancing at Sam, and Cody looked like his head was going to pop off he was so mad, glaring at Lizzie.

"Seems to me like some of your friends are jerks."

"They're just joking." Sam frowned and shoved his hands in his pockets. "I don't need you to come get me, Dean."

"If you change your mind-"

"I won't."

Dean took a step backward. "Fine. Just... be careful."

Sammy huffed and turned back to his friends, laughing tightly at Lizzie's teasing, trying to salvage his dignity.

Dean did believe Sam, or at least he believed Sam thought he saw something. But he knew what came of telling grown-ups that you'd seen something, and insisting that what you'd seen was real.

_Three years. Therapy. Telling the same story over and over, every time. Pills. More therapy. They told the Kirklands to send me away, separate me from Sam. That's when I stopped telling the truth. Grown-ups never ever believe._

Dean would do anything to protect Sam from that, even if it meant hurting his feelings and not supporting his belief in front of his friends.

The bell rang and he turned away from Sam, and back to the school.

-.-

It was only luck that the local paper only had one paper carrier by the name of 'Dean'. He'd gotten the route map from the paper's distribution department with a smile and a fake ID. He'd been hoping there'd only be one 'road that went nowhere' on the kid's route, but the dead-end roads bordering the forest turned the map into something resembling an alien amoeba. Typical suburbs.

After that dead-end of his own, he'd taken the map to the Clarksburg town hall to cross-reference with the list of delinquent property tax payments, figuring maybe if the house was 'wrong', the owner might also be none too concerned about civic responsibility. However all the houses on the kid's route were paid up. Bobby sweet-talked the clerk into checking the addresses on the roads around the forest for bylaw violations, got an armload of paper for his efforts and took the whole mess back to the hotel to sort through.

Bobby liked paper. Paper told you things without worrying what your intentions were. It also didn't care if you were wearing practical clothes and a hat instead of something most people get buried in.

He stopped at the hotel long enough to change out of the suit, chew down a McYuck burger and cross-reference a couple dozen bylaw violators to addresses on the kid's paper route.

There might still not be a case in this town. It could be the 'wrong' the kid felt about the house meant it was just a drug den, in which case a quick anonymous call to the appropriate authorities, and Bobby'd be on his way to clear out a bar in Oregon.

He turned on the police band scanner just in case, and began making a short-list and a map of his own.

-.-

Dean munched on an apple and read the hand-written note on the kitchen counter.

_"Boys,_

_I had to go into town to deal with Nicky's paperwork, the hearing went well, he went back home today! I'm sorry you didn't get a chance to say goodbye, but you know how great this is for Nicky."_

Dean nodded. Nicky going home meant the judge had put his dad in jail, and he could be with his mom without being scared anymore. Good. Not many of the foster kids that stayed with the Kirklands got news that good.

_"I'll only be gone a couple hours. Dad will be home by six. There's fruit in the fridge and Pizza Bagels in the freezer. If you don't eat all the peaches, I'll make a pie tomorrow. Call Mr. and Mrs. Gregorovich next door if you need to. They'll check on you around four._

_Hugs and kisses, Mom."_

"Want an apple?" Dean shouted after Justin who was already in the family room hooking up the Sega console.

"Got anything better?"

"Pizza Bagels?"

"Yeah, I'll have one of those."

The phone rang as Dean hit start on the microwave. He glanced at the clock; half past three. As usual, the neighbor was calling early. Maybe she thought she might catch them getting up to no good by calling thirty minutes ahead of schedule.

Dean picked up the phone and spoke as loud as he could. Besides being habitually early, the neighbors were also old, hard of hearing and excellent cookie-makers.

"Hi Mrs. Gregorovich... Nope, everything's fine... Just video games with a friend... Yes, we did our homework first." Dean rolled his eyes theatrically and Justin snickered as he got his Pizza Bagel out of the microwave. "No, Sam's got Tae Kwon Do tonight, he'll be back before four-thirty... He's riding back on his bike with a bunch of friends, like he usually does... Yeah, it's fine... They're okay with it, they say it encourages independence... Yeah, I'll call if we need anything... Thanks for calling, Mrs. Gregorovich."

Dean hung up.

"Think we can go over and score some cookies later?" asked Justin through a mouthful of Pizza Bagel.

"After Sam gets back, yeah, sure."

-.-

Birds chirped and fluttered between trees in the bird sanctuary.

"Come on, we have to!" said Lizzie. "We're gonna be late."

"No you won't," said Cody. "It'll take the same time it always does for us to walk back."

"Nuh uh, we'll be late, our Mom's gonna be mad. We have to cut through the woods." Lizzie glanced at Gail.

Gail glanced at the woods then stood up straight. "Yeah. It takes too long to walk all the way around all the time. We can cut through and get home faster."

"Yeah." Lizzie crossed her arms and smirked.

"I'm not cutting through there," said Cody.

"Me either," said Sam.

"If you two are both 'fraidy-cats, me and Gail will just go by ourselves. Won't we Gail?"

"Um." Gail's eyes flicked toward the dark path. "Yeah."

"But the teacher said no one's supposed to walk home alone," said Cody.

"We're always together," Lizzie said in a quiet, even voice.

"We never walk home alone," said Gail, holding her sister's hand. Standing on the path in their identical dresses, they smiled in unison.

"Never mind the woods," Cody said, rolling his bike backward a little. "You two are creepy."

Gail covered her mouth and giggled. "We've been practicing!"

Lizzie sighed and dropped her sister's hand. "Gaaaail, it doesn't work if you giggle!"

"Sorry." Gail kept giggling.

"I'm still not going in there," Cody said.

"Scared of the monster?"

"No," said Cody, rolling his eyes, "'cause monsters aren't real."

"What about _aliens?"_

"Shut up! Sam?"

Sam had been staring into the woods. The sun was shining, but the path into the woods seemed darker than ever. The hair on the back of Sam's neck prickled. "There could be a bear or a cougar or something," he muttered.

"We're _green_ belts. We could take a stupid old bear." Lizzie smirked. "You scared Sammy? Hunh? I bet you're scared. You're scared of some old house. Who's scared of a house?"

Sam clenched his jaw, squeezing his front brake shut-open-shut.

"Leave him alone!" shouted Cody. "You haven't seen it, maybe it's a really scary house, a haunted house!"

Lizzie snorted.

Sam swallowed and hitched one shoulder up in a half-shrug. "I'm not scared of the house. It's just creepy. This is different. That FBI guy at school today, he wouldn't have been asking questions about the woods if there wasn't maybe something bad in them. And anyway, no one's supposed to go into the woods because of the birds."

"People cut through the woods all the time."

"No they don't!" said Cody.

"Yes they do, there's trails," said Gail. "They go in and watch birds and stuff."

"Yeah," said Lizzie.

"I'm still not going," said Cody.

Sam rocked his bike back and forth an inch.

"Come on, chickens," Lizzie taunted.

"Yellow belts," Gail said with a quiet giggle.

"With a green stripe!" Cody protested.

The twins laughed and walked down the sun-dappled path into the woods. Sam sat astride his bike and watched them go, twisting one of the hand-grips around and around.

"Come on, Sam. Let 'em go if they want to be stupid." Cody rolled his bike along the sidewalk a few yards, then put his feet down on the concrete and waited, chewing his bottom lip.

"Cody, I-" Sam kept staring into the woods.

"You aren't gonna follow them just 'cause they called you a chicken, are you?"

"That's not it." Sam shook his head. "I can't explain, I've just got... a feeling."

Cody huffed and put a foot on his upper pedal. "Fine, if you wanna be stupid too, go right ahead. I'm going home."

"No one's supposed to go home alone, though."

"It's not like I'm an idiot going into the woods. Besides," Cody straightened up on his bike, "I'll just pretend I'm a Klingon. Nobody ever messes with Klingons."

Sam looked from Cody to the trail the girls were disappearing down.

Cody looked down the trail too, then back at Sam, then shrugged. "Do whatever you want, Sam, it's okay. I ride to the video store and back on my own all the time. It's not that far."

"Ride straight home, okay?" Sam looked his friend in the eye. "Fast as you can. Don't stop for anything but traffic, and don't talk to anyone."

"You sound like my _mom_."

"Cody-"

"Okay, okay, yeesh." Cody started pedaling his bike along the road circling the bird sanctuary. Sam watched him go, then turned back towards the trail into the woods. He couldn't see the twins anymore, but he could hear Lizzie's voice over the birdsong.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," Sam muttered, standing on the pedals and kicking up a cloud of dust from his back tire. "Lizzie, Gail, I'm coming, wait up!"

-.-

Justin scooted Sonic through another hidden tunnel, jumped on a launch pad and sailed into the air, clearing rings and chuckling.

Dean glanced up at the clock. Five minutes to four. Sam's class would be out now. Even though it would be a while yet before Sam got back, Dean started listening for the door. He itched to get on his bike and ride to meet Sam as he left the Community Center beside the school, but wouldn't unless Sam called. He'd been riding home with his friends every Tuesday for months now, but with the weird FBI guy at the school asking questions, and then the teachers reminding everyone not to walk home alone had Dean antsy. Adoptive parents aside, Sam was his only family. Sammy was his brother.

The Kirklands were the only parents Sammy had known. They'd been foster parents to the two of them for four years before they had officially adopted them both. They'd waited four years for biological family, but it seemed like they were all dead or couldn't be found. There was an uncle or something once, Dean thought he remembered meeting him, but then he'd disappeared too.

Dean remembered before the fire. Not sharing a house with kids who stayed a month, three months, had nightmares, fought, stole things, ran away. New kids that sometimes tried to hurt Sammy or him, and were sent away. Kids that cried all the time. Kids that just sat and stared. Foster kids. Almost all of them of them were okay, but none of them came to the Kirkland's because they wanted to. Dean knew how scary it was to have the whole world change overnight. Most of these kids still had their parents, but their parents weren't good, or were having problems and couldn't take care of themselves and their kids.

Dean remembered Mom and Dad. They were good. He remembered Mom's bright hair and laugh, and Daddy's scratchy chin, smelling like sweat and cars.

He remembered that night. He remembered Mom's scream. He remembered the last thing Dad ever said to him. And he would never forget being out on the lawn, holding baby Sam and watching and waiting for Mom and Dad to come out of the fire. They didn't. But he saw something more than the fire.

Dean had stopped talking to anyone about what he thought he'd seen that night. He hadn't even told Sammy. If it kept Sam safe, he'd never tell him.

Maybe Dean hadn't seen anything. He'd been four years old. All he really knew is that the fire took Mom and Dad, and anything he saw in Sam's nursery window - any shadows watching from the flames - that was just 'too much imagination'. Years of telling the truth and being 'treated' for it was enough to let Dean know he needed to keep his mouth shut.

"Here," said Justin, passing the controller. "You're up."

"What?"

"The game? Your turn?"

"Okay, right." Frowning, Dean started the level, but kept listening for the door.

-.-

Sam rode slowly behind the twins, old dead pine-cones left from last winter crunching under his tires. Sun slashed between the branches, dappling the path in light and shadow.

The woods weren't really all that dark, but the hair on the back of Sam's neck still stood up. It felt like the house. It felt wrong. It felt like someone was watching them.

Sam thought back to the schoolyard at recess. Dean hadn't said he believed him. Dean had never said anything when Sam avoided the house after asking about it the first time. Sam had thought his brother believed him, that maybe he knew the house was wrong too. But Dean didn't say he believed him in the schoolyard, in front of his friends.

"Still back there, or did you ride back out of the woods?" Lizzie called back.

Sam frowned. The girls were a bit further ahead than he'd thought, and he rotated the pedals once to catch up. "I'm back here. You guys are slow as molasses."

"Why don't you ride ahead of us then?"

Sam fell silent.

"Don't want to ride through the scary woods on your own?"

"I'm just watching out for you guys," Sam muttered.

The twins laughed and kept walking.

Rolling his bike along behind the girls, Sam got that feeling again, stronger. Something was wrong. He stopped his bike.

The woods were still. Really still. There wasn't even the chirp of a single bird in the bird sanctuary.

"You guys, we should leave," Sam called forward. "We should turn around and go back."

Gail stopped and looked back at Sam, but Lizzie kept walking and flipped her hair. "We're halfway through Sam, it's just as far to keep going through as it is to go back. Besides, we'll really be late if we go back now."

"Yeah but..." Sam started rolling forward again to keep up, peering around the woods, seeing the backs of houses peeking through the trees along one side of the trail. "It's not worth-"

Deeper in the woods, twigs snapped.

The twins jumped, Sam slammed on his brakes. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound beyond their own breathing. Sam's nerves sang like nails on a chalkboard.

"Ha," choked Lizzie loudly, then cleared her throat. "Hahahhah. Just, just a deer or something. Ha. Scaredy Sam! You should see the look on your-"

Something thrashed among the shrubby trees. Out on the path ahead, a dark shape much bigger than a deer emerged.

The twins screamed.

-.'.-

-|(continued in Part 2)|-


	2. Chapter 2

**__**

~ ii ~

In Cody Harris' house the front door slammed.

"Shoes!" his mother shouted from the kitchen.

Cody kicked his shoes off and thumped up the stairs.

"How was Tae Kwon Do?"

"I can't talk to you, Mom! I'm a Klingon!"

"Okay, honey. Get washed up and help me with dinner."

Cody slammed his bedroom door too.

Cody's mom sighed and kept peeling carrots. "Klingons are rude."

-.-

After the initial startled scream from the twins, the shape froze, letting them all see what it was.

"It's a man," Sam said, but the hair on the back of his still neck stood up. Maybe this was who the FBI agent was looking for.

The man was tall even though he wasn't standing up straight, and stood on the path far ahead of them. As they watched the man tipped his head back and sniffed the air.

"What's wrong with his clothes?" Lizzie whispered.

Sam swallowed. "They're torn up. He's covered in blood."

"A- are you okay, Mister?" Gail yelled at the man.

"Gail!" Lizzie squeaked.

The man growled and started loping up the path towards them.

The twins shrieked again, turned and started to run.

Sam's eyes darted from Lizzie and Gail to the man and back. _He's going to be able to catch them, he's got longer legs... But I'm on a bike..._ "Run and get help!" he shouted at the girls, standing up on his pedals and pumping his bike towards the man.

The man stopped at the sight of eight-year-old Sam bearing down on him and tilted his head to the side.

"Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" Sam shouted, waving an arm and hoping the twins were getting away, not daring to look back. Sam's bike swished close past the man, sending him stumbling backward.

Skidding to a stop several yards down the path, Sam looked back. The man stood in the path, hands opening and closing into fists, huffing. Way beyond him, Sam could see Lizzie and Gail running up and down side-trails, trying to find a break in the fence to get out of the woods. Sam's heart was pounding; he felt like Leonardo. Or Michelangelo. At least Casey Jones without his mask.

"Come and get me!" shouted Sam.

The man snarled, then turned and took a step toward the twins.

"No you don't!" Sam charged his bike at the man again.

When Sam got close, the man stepped to the side, like a bull-fighter, grabbing Sam's handlebars and sending both him and his bike flying into the underbrush.

The world spun around and Sam landed in the bush first, with his bike landing on top of him. A hundred scratches on his arms stung and his elbow hurt.

_This'd be a lot easier if I had a turtle's shell,_ Sam thought dizzily.

The man was suddenly much closer, sniffing the air, grabbing at Sam's bike. Sam yelled and grabbed the bike frame, holding it down, keeping it tangled in the bush and between himself and the man.

But it wasn't a man. His eyes were blood-red where they should be white and his face was a lumpy mess of red welts and scars. His breath smelled like rotting meat. The feeling of 'wrong' flooded through Sam.

"You're a monster!" he croaked, wide-eyed. "Y- you're a real monster!"

The monster stopped pulling at Sam's bike, drooling red, then let go. Sam grunted as he pulled his own bike down on top of himself, tangling him and it further in the bush.

When he looked up again, the monster was gone.

Sam took a deep breath and shouted as loud as he could. "Lizzie! Gail! Run! He's coming after you!"

-.-

Lizzie could hear Sam shouting but they'd gotten too far away and she couldn't tell what he was saying. She ran down the trail she'd just gone up. "It's blocked! They're all blocked!" she shouted, running up another faint path leading towards one of the houses. "The fence is too high!"

"There has to be a hole in the fence somewhere!" Gail shouted back, running down a similar path to the main trail. "Keep trying!"

Lizzie got to the end of the next path and nearly turned around immediately at what seemed like another dead end, but stopped and looked again. The chain links behind a dense flower-laden shrub were open, making a big gap in the fence; more than big enough for her Gail and Sam to fit through.

"I found one!" she yelled.

Back on the main path through the woods, Gail screamed.

"Gail!" Lizzie spun and ran back down the path.

The ugly man had caught up to them and had grabbed Gail by the arm.

"You let her go!" Lizzie shrieked, shaking.

Gail glanced at Lizzie, then took a deep breath, twisting and pulling back against the ugly man's thumb. His wrist bent painfully and he released his hold on her arm with a grunt of pain. Then she kicked him in the kneecap with a loud "KAI!" that was echoed by a sick crunch.

The ugly man roared and fell down clutching his knee.

"Wow!" said Lizzie. "That really works!"

"C'mon, Lizzie!" said Gail, grabbing her sister's hand. "We need to get help!" They ran up the narrow path towards the break in the fence, through the back yard of a house, up the back stairs and in the open back door, not noticing the dark windows and peeling paint.

-.-

Justin spun Sonic around and made yet another fireball-wasp explode.

_Sam should be home any minute._ Dean rubbed his eyes and glanced at the clock. Four-thirty-five. He blinked and looked again. The numbers hadn't changed.

"Sammy?" Dean jumped off the couch and ran into the kitchen. Sam's shoes and bag weren't by the door. He wasn't home.

"Hey, do you want your turn or not, Dean?"

Dean went back into the family room. "I can't. Something's wrong."

"What?" said Justin, picking up the abandoned controller and thunking his feet onto the coffee table as he took Dean's turn.

"Sammy's still not home."

"So? Your little brother's not here. Nicky left and your folks don't have any other foster kids right now, so that means we get undisputed access to the TV and the Sega, right?"

"You don't get it. Ninja Turtles starts at four-thirty." Dean went to the window and peered up and down the street. No Sam. "Sammy's missing Ninja Turtles. Sammy _never_ misses Ninja Turtles. He wants to _be_ a Ninja Turtle."

Justin snorted and thumbed the controller, eyes locked on the screen. "Your little brother's a real dork."

For a second, Dean felt like punching his best friend. He shoved Justin's feet off the coffee table instead. "Go home."

Justin looked up, surprised. On the screen, rings exploded from the high-speed hedgehog. "But I thought-"

"Go home, Justin."

As Justin left, Dean picked up the phone and dialed the number for the Community Center, next to the school. It would be exactly like Sam to decide he didn't want to ride home after class without Dean and then sit there sulking because he didn't want to call home and admit it.

-.-

Sam thrashed his way out of the bush, pushing his bike sideways in front of him. He got free in time to see the monster limping along the main path and the twins nowhere in sight.

_Maybe they got away,_ Sam thought.

The monster limped to a stop, peering up a path that lead to one of the houses along the edge of the woods and... _laughed?_ It sounded like a laugh to Sam; a dry, dusty chuckle. It wasn't a happy sound.

"Hey!" yelled Sam, straddling his bike again, not certain where the twins had gone but guessing probably up that trail. "Leave them alone!"

The monster's head snapped back toward Sam, snarling, then it hobbled up the path.

Sam raced along the main trail and skidded to a halt at the end of the path the monster was slowly limping up.

Even though he'd only ever seen the building from the front, Sam knew exactly which house the twins had gone to for help. He could feel it. It felt just like the monster currently limping up the trail towards it, laughing its unfunny laugh.

"Oh no. Oh no." Sam rode along the main trail as fast as he could, heading for the street. He had to get help. He had to get Dean.

-.-

After running up the stairs from the back yard and into the strange house, the twins stopped inside the back porch, panting. "Hello? We need help?"

The house was silent.

"There's nobody home, come on." Lizzie lead the way inside.

"It stinks in here, Lizzie!" said Gail, covering her nose and mouth. "I'm gonna throw up."

"We just need to find a phone and-" Lizzie turned the corner into the kitchen. The first thing she saw was a shattered telephone laying on the floor, wires all torn out of the wall. "Oh," she said.

Then she saw the rest of the kitchen. Brown crusty stuff was splattered all over everything. There were lumps of-

Lizzie turned away. _I don't want to know what that is. I want to go home. We need help._

Gail swallowed, eyes wide, taking in the mess in the room. "Lizzie...?"

"It's just a bunch of really gross stuff, Gail." Lizzie covered her mouth and headed back towards the back porch. "We don't need to go in there. We can go back out and-"

Outside, the flowery bush rustled and the chain link fence creaked. Something growled in pain.

The twins gasped. "He's coming!" whispered Gail.

Lizzie looked from the back porch door to the kitchen doorway.

"We can't go in there," Gail said queasily.

"We aren't going to. Hurry!" Lizzie grabbed her sister's hand and headed for a stairway beside the kitchen door, going up.

-.-

In the half hour he'd been wending his way through the streets of Clarksburg, Bobby hadn't come across a single house that might look wrong to a kid, in his estimation; a couple with loud dogs, some with untidy lawns, one with a paint job that was absolutely evil, even if the house itself wasn't. He was only halfway through his list of bylaw complaints. People in this neighborhood did a hell of a lot of complaining.

_Maybe there really isn't a case here after all._

He turned down yet another dead-end road in the suburban maze when the police scanner on the seat beside him crackled.

'Four Adam Six, I've got a couple reports here of a bunch of kids screaming and horsing around in the avian reserve.'

"Aw no." Bobby turned the volume up. _Please no._

'Dispatch, do you have a more precise 10-20 on that complaint? It's a big forest.'

'Calls coming from the old orchard area. Plum Tree Lane, Mulberry Court, Anglewood Crescent and two locations along the ring road in the four thousand block.'

Bobby circled the roads on his map. That didn't narrow down his search area much.

'Doesn't narrow it down much, Dispatch,' the officer said on the scanner, echoing Bobby's thought. 'It's a quiet afternoon. I'll do a drive-by of the access roads. Nothing more than nuisance calls?'

'Negative, just screaming and running around. Nuisance only, low priority.'

Bobby swore.

'Ten-Four'

_Potential case in the area, screaming kids in the woods. Never a good combination._ Bobby circled around the cul-de-sac he'd just entered and sped out, heading for Plum tree Lane.

-.-

"Okay, thanks Mrs. Martin."

The Tae Kwon Do class had ended almost an hour ago, and no one from it was still at the community centre.

_Where's Sam?_ Dean hung up the phone and jumped a little when it immediately rang. "Hello?"

"Hey, Dean," said Justin.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Look, I'm sorry, Justin, I'm just really worried about Sam-"

"I know, Dean. I'm not that stupid. He hangs out with the kid next door to me, Cody, right?"

A mixed swirl of hope and irritation rose in Dean. "Is he over there now?"

"No, but Cody is. He said Sam and the Thierry twins were going to cut through the bird sanctuary to get home."

Right then, Dean had got a cold shiver. "No way. Sammy would never go through those woods."

"That's what Cody said, but Sam did anyway. They all did." Justin laughed. "But Cody also said he was a Klingon, so I don't know whether you want to believe him."

"Okay, thanks Justin."

"No problem. Hey, uh. I didn't mean to be such a jerk about Sam."

"It's okay. I'll see you tomorrow at school."

"Okay. I hope you find your brother."

"Me too."

Dean hung up, the apple he'd eaten lurching sickly in his stomach. Cody hadn't taken the shortcut and was already home. If Sam took a shortcut with Lizzie and Gail but wasn't home yet...

Something had happened to Sam and the twins in the woods.

Dean looked down at the Gregorovich's phone number, tidily printed on the bottom of the note laying on the counter.

Calling would mean explaining to Mr and Mrs. Older-than-dirt where Sam had gone, and then what? They'd call the Community Centre, even though Dean had already done that, then they'd call Sam's friends, even though Justin had done that. They might even call the police, and that would take even longer because Dean'd have to explain everything again. What Mr. and Mrs. Gregorovich wouldn't do is jump into their car right away and drive straight to the woods, not on Dean's say so.

Dean knew where Sam had gone and stopping to explain things was a waste of time. If Sam was in real trouble, there wasn't time to explain anything to anyone. Dean needed to get to Sam _now_.

He charged up the stairs to the room he shared with Sam, snatched his handmade slingshot from his underwear drawer, and thudded back down the stairs and out the door to his bike.

-.-

The smell wasn't as bad upstairs, but it still hung in the air, tickling the back of the twins' throats.

"He lives here, Lizzie, he has to live here!" Gail whispered as they crept along the hallway. "This is stupid! We're hiding in _his_ house! He's gonna find us!"

"Not if we can find a really good place to hide," Lizzie muttered, peering into rooms. "We'll find a place and wait until he goes away and we can get out."

"Mom's gonna be so mad," Gail said, shaking her head. "We never should have gone into the woods."

"Yeah, I know. Never ever gonna do that again." Lizzie rattled the knob on another door and pushed it open.

Like every other room, everything inside the room was smashed up. The furniture was all broken and tipped over, doors pulled off hinges, mirrors and picture frames twisted and shattered.

"Everything's all wrecked. " Lizzie turned to go to the next room.

"No, look, up there." Gail pointed.

Up above a little nook where the torn-up remains of a bed and a tipped-over chest of drawers rested was an undamaged pair of sliding cupboard doors. They were on a piece of the wall that stuck out a few feet and hung down, making a space about the size of the trunk of Mom's car that hung from the ceiling

"What's a cupboard doing up there?"

"I dunno, but it looks like a really good place to hide."

The floor shook under their feet as the back door slammed. The girls froze. "Maybe he left-"

Downstairs, something crashed.

"Come on!" The twins clambered up the chest of drawers, shoved aside the blankets stored in the cupboard and burrowed inside.

"We just have to hide." Gail whispered. "Sam will call 911, they'll come and get us and take the ugly man away."

Lizzie's eyes were wide in the darkness. "The ugly man caught Sam, Gail. What if-"

"Sam's fine," Gail said. "He's gotta be."

-.-

As his bike swooped down onto the road around the woods, Dean heard Sam shouting his name. He turned and saw his brother racing towards him along the forest loop.

Relief flooded through him, rapidly replaced by aggravation. "Where the heck were you?" Dean shouted at his brother.

The back tire of Sam's bike bounced on the pavement as he skidded to a stop in front of Dean. His eyes were wide open, white all the way around. Twigs and leaves stuck out of Sam's hair, and his face and arms were covered in scratches.

Dean frowned. "What happened to you?"

"It's got them!" Sam huffed. "We gotta help! Police would never believe me and it'd be too late!"

"Wait, wait. What's got who?"

"The monster! It has Lizzie and Gail!"

"Monster?" Dean felt his shoulders stiffen. "Sammy-"

"Just come on!" Sam turned his bike and stood up on his pedals, racing back the way he'd come.

Dean followed his brother along the road, chewing his lip. He felt sick. Part of him believed Sam, but part of him felt like he'd failed, that he should have said something earlier, kept Sam from saying anything about what he felt. Maybe Sammy had seen a monster, maybe he hadn't. Sam was all scratched up and scared, but that didn't prove anything. If the twins were playing a trick on Sam because of what he'd said about the house on Anglewood, if the twins were making Sam think there was a monster while they were sitting somewhere safe and waiting to laugh at Sammy, Dean would- he'd...

Ahead of Dean, Sam swooped onto Anglewood Crescent, dropped his bike on the sidewalk in front of house number 2872 and ran straight up the front porch. Dean coasted to a stop beside Sam's abandoned bike and watched open-mouthed as Sam twisted and yanked on the door to the house he normally wouldn't even ride past.

"It's stuck, Dean! We've gotta help them!"

_Sam's trying to get into the house that freaks him out. Even if the girls are just playing a trick, Sam wouldn't- Something really is wrong._

"I'm coming, Sammy." Dean dropped his bike beside his brother's and ran up to help Sam with the stuck door. It popped open and the boys tumbled inside.

-.-

Looking into the kitchen, Dean hoped there really was a monster, because he didn't want to think about any person being able to do something like that. He really regretted eating that apple.

"They wouldn't have gone in there, Dean," Sam whispered, wide-eyed at the mess.

"Yeah. I wouldn't either." Dean covered his mouth and nose.

Above them, the ceiling creaked.

Dean looked up. "They're upstairs."

"What if the monster is too?"

Dean glanced at the kitchen again then looked away. _What would MacGyver do?_ But Dean didn't think there'd be time to build a trap or make a bomb out of Aspirin. "We're going to have to be really quiet, Sammy. We need to find Lizzie and Gail and get them outside." He looked around, then pointed at a staircase off the front room.

"If they're hiding, how are we gonna find them? This house is huge!"

Dean gripped the stair railing. "We split up. We'll check all the rooms, and as soon as we find them, we all just run for the outside. Whoever it is, they won't do anything to any of us when we're out where people will see. Okay?"

Sam took a deep breath. "Yeah."

-.-

_This house has way more rooms than ours does,_ Sam thought to himself in distraction, trying to be completely silent as he walked along the hallway, and focus on his breathing and balance like they taught in Tae Kwon Do. Being inside the house, all he could feel was wrong-wrong-wrong; the hair on the back of his neck felt like it might uproot itself and run away. It was hard to think of anything else.

As he passed one doorway, Sam heard a quiet hiss and looked back in. Inside a funny little cupboard on the ceiling, Sam could see the twins waving.

"Sam! Did you get help?" whispered one of them.

"Yep," Dean was searching rooms in a different part of the upstairs, but he'd find them all soon. "Come on down, let's get out of here."

He helped Gail climb down from the cupboard. Lizzie was crawling down the overturned chest of drawers when the floor behind Sam creaked.

"Dean, I found-!" the rest of his words were choked off as something grabbed the collar of Sam's t-shirt. As the twins backed into the corner, wide-eyed, the monster yanked Sam around so they were face to face.

The monster grinned and spoke.

"Lunch."

-.-

The scanner had gone quiet. No further complaints of screaming were being called in and the patroller had signed off after a visual check of the roads. Bobby's tires squealed as he pulled into Anglewood Crescent and stopped opposite the bylaw violator on the street.

The house was wrong by many people's standards. Peeling paint, a broken window and a lawn that needed a scythe more than a lawnmower.

Two kids' bikes lay abandoned on the sidewalk out front, and the front door stood wide open.

"Son of a bitch."

Old abandoned-looking houses always drew the imagination into thinking they were haunted, but they drew in other things as well, like monsters and kids on bikes. Bobby parked the Chevelle and grabbed his bag from the passenger seat.

-.-

_There can't be many more places two girls could hide,_ Dean thought, then saw the back of a man in tattered and bloody clothes through the doorway of one of the rooms Sammy was checking and didn't see Sam anywhere. He loaded a rock into his slingshot and crept closer, taking aim.

"H-" Dean's shout froze in his throat. It wasn't a man. The thing had a head, two arms and two legs, but there was no way it was human. It was a monster. The skin on the man's face was rough and mottled and the edge of his eye where it should be white was red.

Not just too much imagination, not a shadow or a trick of the firelight, not just an ugly man. A genuine, actual monster.

The monster had Sam pulled up by his shirt collar, and the girls were stuck in the corner, holding onto each other, scared.

Dean swallowed and raised his slingshot, scowling. "Hey! Ugly!"

The monster's head snapped around and he snarled at Dean.

With a whiiip-THWACK, the stone hit the monster in the face. It howled, dropping Sam and curling away from Dean and the other kids.

"Run!" Dean shouted, loading another rock into the slingshot as Sam and the Thierry twins scooted out the doorway past him.

Sam stopped in the doorway behind his brother. "Dean, what about-"

"Just run, Sammy!"

It wasn't the monster that had haunted him since the day his parents died, but it was a monster he could keep away from Sammy. Dean aimed the slingshot again.

"You stay away from my brother, you hear me?"

The monster drooled and shuffled toward Dean.

-.-

Bobby picked a retirement home staff ID badge from a pile of non-organic items that had been hurled into a corner of the horrific kitchen, the collar of his t-shirt up to cover his nose and mouth.

"Stress leave my ass," he muttered. Though he guessed becoming a full-fledged Rugaru was a stressful experience, as was being eaten by one.

Along with several snapped animal collars were the sad, unmistakable remains of Thaddeus Fischer - a set of dentures, a pacemaker and a barely used metal hip joint - and the remnants of a set of scrubs and another retirement home staff ID that Bobby was certain would match up to at least one of the other orderlies on stress leave. No signs of any kids, but this was definitely a Rugaru.

Upstairs there was a holler, a thump and a roar. Bobby grabbed the flamethrower from his bag and ran for the staircase.

The twin girls and the boy who'd thought the house was wrong were at the top of the stairs as Bobby came charging up. The girls screamed.

"It's okay," the boy said, "he's the FBI man from school today, he's just wearing a hat!"

"Keep running kids!" yelled Bobby, "Get out of the house!"

The girls passed him on either side and rattled down the stairs, but the boy stayed in front of him, looking back down the hallway.

"You too, sport!"

"Please, my brother!"

"I'll get him, just get out of here!"

The boy looked at Bobby assessingly, then nodded and ran past him and down the stairs.

Bobby looked down the hall to see the damnedest thing he'd ever seen. The older boy from the schoolyard, face pinched white in fury, backing out of one of the rooms down the hall and holding a slingshot loaded and aimed. Inside the room there was a crash of some furniture going over and the snarl of something really unfriendly.

The boy let fly with the slingshot and the snarl inside the room turned into a yelp of pain. He started reloading the slingshot, still backing up, glaring into the room.

Bobby ran up the hall. "Kid, I got him! Get out of here!"

The boy whipped his head towards Bobby. "Where's Sammy?"

"They're all outside." Bobby pulled an improvised flamethrower from his bag, stepping up to the doorway. "Get outside with your brother and don't look back."

When Bobby didn't immediately hear footsteps running away, he glanced over his shoulder. The kid stood behind him in the hall, face pale, freckles standing out on his cheeks, staring at Bobby.

_He holds a Rugaru off with a slingshot and freezes now?_ "Now, kid! Go!" Bobby barked.

The kid gasped and ran down the hall, clattering down the stairs.

Bobby turned back to see the Rugaru creeping out of the room towards him. He stilled with a snarl when Bobby spotted him.

"Seems like I owe Travis a case of beer," Bobby said, aiming the improvised flamethrower.

The Rugaru shifted, keeping his left leg from touching the ground as much as possible. His knee was swollen and reddened beneath the shredded remnants of his nursing home scrubs. Given time, it'd bruise spectacularly. Bobby didn't plan on giving him time to bruise.

"You're gone, aren't you?"

Showing no reaction to Bobby's words, the Rugaru limped forward. He hunched low and snarled, looking for an opening to attack.

"Sorry about this, but you should've left humans off the menu."

Bobby sparked up the flamethrower.

-.-

It was still daylight out when Dean stumbled out the front door; it felt like it should be the middle of the night.

_The FBI man, he sounded just like Dad._ Dean shook his head and waded through the over-long grass to where Sam and the twins were ducked down, hiding. Sam's collar was torn and the scratches he'd gotten earlier stood out against his skin.

"Did it hurt you?" Dean asked, dropping his slingshot and grabbing Sam by the shoulders.

"I'm okay, Dean. I got hurt worse when he threw me in the bush."

Dean scowled. "You're sure?"

"I'm _okay_."

Dean turned to the twins. "How about you two?"

"Oh, we're _fine_," said Lizzie.

"If you hadn't found us, the FBI man might've walked right by us," said Gail distantly. "That monster would've ate us all up."

Lizzie sniffed and crossed her arms. "He's just an ugly man, Gail. Monsters aren't real and don't really eat kids. And we _could've_ gotten away on our own, we were just-"

"Oh Lizzie, _shut up!_" Gail said, then hugged Dean and Sam tightly. "Thank you."

"Uh. Sure," said Dean.

Sammy squirmed away and made a face. "Ew. Gross."

Gail stuck out her tongue. Lizzie pulled at a tuft of grass. "Yeah, thanks."

"No problem," said Sam. "That's what friends do, right? Look out for each other?"

Lizzie glanced up, face set in a defensive scowl, but Sam just smiled.

"Yeah. I guess." Lizzie smiled back.

"The house! It's on fire!" Gail gasped.

Dean's head snapped around. Smoke poured from the upstairs windows of the house they'd just escaped, orange light flickering.

"C'mon Lizzie! We gotta go call 911!" Gail grabbed her sister's arm and pulled, wading through the long grass to the next house on the street.

Dean's breath stopped in his throat, and he stood up, and stepped out of the grass onto the path to the house's front door. _"Take your brother outside! Now Dean! Go!"_ The man had sounded like Dad, and now there was fire. Dean watched the flickering upstairs windows for shadows.

Sam's hand nudged into his. Dean grabbed it and held on. "It's okay, Sammy," he said from a long way away.

"That FBI man. He'll be okay, right Dean?"

_Mom and Dad are coming. Mom and Dad are coming._ Dean swallowed, an old feeling of numbness coming over him. "He won't come out of the fire. No one comes out of the fire."

Glass shattered and flames shot out from an upstairs window. Dean ducked and threw his arms over Sam to protect him.

Just then the FBI man burst out the front door, coughing and staggering.

-.-

_I hate burning Rugarus,_ Bobby thought as he stumbled down the porch stairs, eyes watering, clearing the smoke residue. _Travis can have 'em all._ He took a big breath in the clear air, coughed hard a couple times then opened his eyes to see the two brothers standing on the path in front of him. Be damned if he could remember either of their names off-hand. The littlest one was grinning ear-to-ear.

"You're alive." The older boy was even paler than he'd been inside the house. "You walked out of the fire."

Bobby coughed and straightened up. "I'm fine, kid, I'm fine. Are you okay?"

"We're okay!" chirped the little one.

The older boy blinked and straightened up too. "Yeah. No problem."

"Hell of a job with that slingshot." Bobby picked the handmade weapon off the overgrown lawn and handed it back.

"Thanks." The boy's mouth opened, looking down at the slingshot as though he wanted to say something about it, but then closed his mouth and looked back up at Bobby like he'd just landed from Mars.

"What about the girls?" Bobby asked.

"They're calling the fire department," volunteered Sam. "They're okay too."

"Good. Good." Bobby smiled grimly. "I better get out of here then."

"Did you..." The older boy hesitated. "Did you get him?"

"Yep." Bobby took off his baseball cap and wiped his brow. "Probably best you all forget about what you saw."

"I know." The kid's shoulders stiffened and that same opaque expression from the schoolyard threatened to slide across his face again.

Bobby looked sidelong at the kid. If there was one thing he could tell, it was when someone had something they wanted to say, but couldn't. Also there was the proven accuracy of his little brother's sense of 'wrong'. Bobby knew a lady in Kansas that might be able to help him with that.

"Tell you what, kid." Bobby pulled out one of the 'FBI' business cards with the number of his alternate line at the wrecking yard on it and handed it to Dean. "Next time you or your brother hear tell of a monster, or if you wanna talk about what happened in there, you call me, okay? 'Cause I can tell you right now, your folks ain't gonna believe you."

That got half a smirk out of the boy. "Trust me. I know." He ran a thumb over the card before tucking it away.

-.-

Sam and Dean stayed to talk to the fire department, but Lizzie and Gail didn't let them get a chance to try to explain. The girls talked over top of each other explaining that they had been attacked in the woods by an ugly man who tried to grab them. They ran into the house and found really gross things and hid. Sam had ridden off for help, and he and Dean had come back and rescued them from the ugly man. They didn't know how the fire started.

Since the fire damage was primarily on the second floor, the police found plenty of evidence of what had been happening in the house before the fire. Once the remains of Thaddeus Fischer, two other retirement home orderlies and several animals turned up in the ruins of the house, the police stopped asking about the fire and started looking into the orderly who had been at its center.

Dean and Sam got their pictures in Dean's newspaper. After a short inquiry into his activities at the school that day, no one asked about or mentioned Agent Kayser.

**_~ Epilogue ~_**

Two months later, Dean sat at home in the kitchen with an untouched piece of peach pie. It was summer. The Kirklands - his and Sam's folks - were at work, Sammy was over at Cody's place, and Dean had a worn business card and the telephone in front of him.

After the therapists and counselors trying to get him to talk, and then telling him he was imagining things or sick in the head when he did talk, he'd stopped talking about that night to anyone. He never even told Sam what he saw, not really. After what had happened, Dean wanted to. He couldn't figure out how yet, but he would.

Dean stared down at the card.

"Darn it." He picked up the phone and dialed the Agent's direct office number.

The line picked up after two rings. "Agent Kayser speaking."

Dean sat, staring at the formica tabletop, phone to his ear, just breathing. After years of not speaking about something, talking to someone he barely knew felt impossible. He couldn't even see the Agent's face to gauge his reaction. Dean wanted to hang up.

"Hello?" Agent Kayser's voice was a little annoyed. In the background on the phone, a dog barked.

_He fights monsters. He walked out of the fire. If I ever tell this to anyone other than Sammy..._ Dean cleared his throat. "Um. Hi, Agent Kayser. It's Dean Kirkland, from Clarksburg, Iowa. I dunno if you remember me?"

There was a pause and something creaked over the line, like an old chair leaning back. "Yeah! You're the young fella that's good with a slingshot. What's up?"

"I..." Dean took a deep breath, let it out again. "Me and Sammy, we're orphans, or I mean we were 'til the adoption-" Dean shook his head to himself. _Stop babbling. Just tell him._ "The night our parents died, I saw something. In the fire, like a shadow."

"Yeah?" Dean wished he could see the man's face, but his tone didn't hold any judgment or ridicule. "What kind of a shadow?"

"It looked like a man, up at Sam's nursery window, watching me and Sammy. He was all on fire, and watching. Then he, he _waved_."

"Waved?"

"Like he was in a parade. He waved at us. And then he turned away." The next words came out in a rush: "I think he killed our parents."

Silence fell on the other end of the line and for a second Dean worried he'd made the wrong choice, that even with the monster and everything, Agent Kayser was just another grown-up that wouldn't believe him.

"Dean, I believe you."

The panic building in Dean fell away. "Really?"

"Yeah, son. Really. I can think of a couple things that might've been, and given the possibilities, it definitely bears looking into."

"Thank you." Dean swallowed. "Thank you, Agent Kayser."

"Incidentally, my real name's Bobby Singer. If we're gonna be looking into what happened to your folks together, you'd best call me that."

"Okay, Mr. Singer."

"Now," Dean heard a rustling of papers and the click of a pen. "Tell me everything you remember about the night of the fire."

_-|(The end)|-_

* * *

(If anyone's interested, there are Bonus Features for this fic (two graphics and a hint about something you might have missed in the story) at my LiveJournal. The link is on my author page.)


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